


nanna

by biggrstaffbunch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Infinity War spoilers, Post Infinity War, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-28
Updated: 2018-04-28
Packaged: 2019-04-28 20:24:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14457039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biggrstaffbunch/pseuds/biggrstaffbunch
Summary: Thor, after.





	nanna

Thor asks of the spirited rabbit with the penchant for guns, “What more could I lose?”

He means it, in that moment. Beyond the breath in his body, the fire of his soul, what more can the universe take from him? What more can there even be to risk?

And then the ash rides the wind. Thanos snaps his fingers, and a strange, heavy silence rolls over the world, leaving nothing more than dust in its wake. The people, the planet, put under Thor’s protection such a short while ago:

Gone, in less than a blink.

Horror grabs Thor in its overwhelming grip, and he learns:

There is  _always_  more to lose.

|

He dreams. Of Loki, slumped and broken, blue lips open and tongue lolling obscenely out.

He dreams of the way Loki had looked at him amidst the ruins of that ship, the fevered shine of his eyes and the tremble of his hands. He dreams of Loki saying “brother.”

When Thor wakes, his fingers crack as they uncurl from the fist pressed to his heart. It sounds not unlike the bones giving way in Loki’s neck as he fell.

|

Heimdall died with a blade through his gut, split at the belly like a fish. Thor remembers watching the life seep from his face, the blood staining his mouth. Thor remembers the rage that built within him like a conflagration, the helpless anger that slid out from his eyes in hot tears.

Thor knows the way that death feels when it’s close enough to touch, but it will not touch you.

 _Take me_ , he screamed behind his ill-fashioned muzzle, as his ship burned and his people died and Heimdall bled.  _Take me, too._

But it did not. It does not.

It will not.

|

The moon is high in a sky scattered with missing stars. There are trees that watch solemnly over the remaining people of Wakanda, looming large in the distance. Thor walks the low grass that shivers beneath the trees, and he thinks of a loneliness so deep that it grows roots.

|

“It feels like the maw of a great beast is swallowing me whole,” he says one morning when Natasha asks after his well-being. “It feels like I am being drowned by wave after wave of a churning, fetid sea. It feels like I am running an endless distance and I will never reach my destination.”

Thor looks at Natasha, at her pale eyes and pale hair and pale skin and the haunted, hunted way she holds herself now. As if she doesn’t trust herself not to dissolve at any moment. As if she doesn’t trust the ground beneath her feet to stay firm for any longer than the moment her heel strikes the dirt.

“It feels,” Thor says slowly, words dragged out of his chest, “familiar.”

Natasha quirks her mouth, a ghost of a smile. Rueful.

“Yeah,” she answers, “That happens.”

She pats Thor’s arm before passing him sugar for his coffee, and they sip in silence for a very long while.

|

Thor has lived for over 1000 years. He has never tallied the friendships made, nor the loved ones gone. He’s never had cause. He’s never had time.

Now, here, with no kin and no kingdom, Thor finds that he cannot help but begin the list.

Korg. Brunhilde. The Warriors Three. Sif. Heimdall. His parents, his brother, the einherjar and the Valkyries, his people, both on Midgard and Asgard. Jane, and Erik, and Darcy. Friends, new and old, scattered to the ends of space in so many rearranged atoms, blown apart by Ragnarok, by the fires of Yggdrasil, by the whims of a madman who can bend reality itself.

He has stood in the heart of a dying star, holding open the doors of Nidavellir with only the strength of his own two arms. He has commanded lightning, struck down gods and monsters and aliens alike.

But he has not been able to save the dead. And now, here, with no kin and no kingdom--

That is the only thing that seems to matter.

|

With the steely heft of Stormbreaker singing through the air, Thor can travel anywhere in the nine realms.

He stays in Wakanda. He does not know where else to go.

He breaks fast with Natasha and continues a fruitless search for Thanos with Stark and Banner, and patrols the grounds with Colonel Rhodes and Captain Rogers. He sees ghosts in them all, a ravaging grief that lingers in their eyes, the quiet hitch of their breathing. The way their fingers twitch, as if still searching the dirt for the remnants of those they once called teammate, partner, brother, friend.

As for Thor, he tosses and turns in the bed he has been given in a country not his own. He thinks of Idunn and her golden apples, of children with fingers sticky from juice. He thinks of Asgard, with her bright spires and hallowed halls, the endless blue sky stretched over summer eternal.

He is a stranger in a stranger’s land, and he longs to go home.

 _Home is a people, not a place_. Dead words uttered by a dead father.

 _Odin’s son_. A dead father, mourned by a dead brother.

The truth, bitter like mead in the back of Thor’s throat, is that there is nothing, and no one, left to go back to.

|

He dreams, once more, of Loki.

“Thor,” Loki says, and his voice is full of so much affection that the pain unfolds inside Thor like a slip of paper, suddenly and easily and all at once.

“I can’t,” Thor gasps, and he is on his knees, clutching at his throat as the words get stuck there. “Loki, I cannot--I cannot do this on my own.”

There is a glint in Loki’s eyes, red-rimmed and sad. “Are you not ready to see what you’re made of, brother?” he asks, and his hand on Thor’s forehead is a strange benediction. “I have already dogged your footsteps for a millennium and change. Have I not become something of a pattern, a routine?”

He bends, and speaks in Thor’s ear. “Have I not defeated even Death to return, the thorn in your bloody side?”

Thor’s chest rattles. “You have,” he says, and there is a sob that is almost child-like in the words. “You have, you  _have_ , but you will never do so  _again_ \--”

And Loki crumbles, a tower of matter that is no longer a man. No trickery, no illusion. Just the cold, quiet honesty of a mind accepting an unacceptable truth.

Thor is alone, and there is no clever plan nor misspent hope that can change it.

He wakes up, staring unblinkingly at the unending darkness of the ceiling above. His pulse gallops, crashing against the hollow of his throat, the points at his wrist. He gasps for breath and drags himself into a sitting position, his knees to his chest like a little boy.

Thor is alone, like he has never been alone before.

And then, because he is a god and a man and a king and an Avenger, because he was a brother and a son and a lover and friend, because he has sacrificed so much already, and he has never once complained--

Thor buries his face into the folded cradle of his arms, and he finally allows himself cry.

|

When the All-Mother died, there were flowers littering the vessel which bore her, burning, across the water to her rest. Thor slept for months with a blossom pressed between his palms, the fragrance warm like the circle of Frigga’s arms.

He lit a candle for the All-Father on Sakaar, said what words he knew to say, carried with him the scent of the sea.

And for Loki, once, Thor wove a strand of his brother’s hair through his own, donned vambraces with horns carved into the metal. It was a fitting tribute, for a warrior and a prince.

There is no hair now, no gleaming metal helmet to recall or emulate.

Thor only has himself, the beating heart beneath the cage of his ribs, fueled by anger and sorrow and grief and always, always a love that is as godly as himself, grand and looming and the slightest bit terrible, righteous to its core.

There are embers in even the ashes, promises for a world made anew. And if Thor must face the coming dawn without those who have walked with him before--

The least he can do is avenge them.


End file.
